A Piece Of My Heart

What do I want to be a Grandmaster of?

For the second to last task in my Wodehouse Challenge, I’ve been asked to explore five things I wish I could be a Grandmaster of. With so many endless possibilities to choose, it seemed impossible to narrow it down to just five! But as I got thinking about it more, I found I could fairly easily categorize the things I was coming up with into one of three categories, which I will lay out for you now. The first category would be things that are simply beyond the realm of possibility. Of course I would want to be a Grandmaster of talking to animals or teleportation if those things were possible, but since they are not, I’ll force myself to move on.

The second category includes skills/fields/talents that would give me more satisfaction from the act of learning them than by being able to do them right off the bat. The act of practicing and perfecting one’s abilities in these things creates the joy of accomplishment once you finally do achieve them. All sports or physical talents/abilities fall into this category along with solving puzzles, reading dense books, and writing. If you could just all of a sudden do those things at the top level without needing any practice, you wouldn’t know enough about the struggle to get there to feel the appropriate level of fulfillment.

So then, what sorts of things are there left to want to be a Grandmaster of? They have to be things that normal humans can feasibly do, but things that I would find too terribly painful/boring to put in the time needing to learn them. What things would simply be good to know how to do well without needing any practice?

The first one came to me right away: I would love to be an instant Grandmaster in social interactions, especially small talk. As a classic introvert, I often struggle in group gatherings/parties where I’m forced to make small talk with people I hardly know. I find myself standing among a group of people who are talking to each other while I remain silent, or even worse, standing alone. I would seriously love to have the skills to be able to chat easily with people and not feel or sound awkward. My grandmother is a Grandmaster of small talk, and I envy her for it. I think part of her mastery comes from her vast knowledge of the world, which is where the second thing I want to be a Grandmaster of comes from.

It would be great to be like my grandmother and have an anecdote to share about any topic in any situation with any type of person. I would love to know more about history, the arts, religion, politics, and world cultures in general. I do not consider myself very worldly, but I think it would be valuable to have that knowledge base in any number of different situations. If I could be a Grandmaster of culture without needing to live my whole life first, I would do it, but as it is now, I suspect I’ll learn those things slowly over time until I too am the encyclopedia my grandma is.

The third thing I would like to be a Grandmaster of ties in with the culture idea as well. I have always struggled so much to learn languages, but think other languages are so beautiful and would love to be a Grandmaster of speaking different languages. I learned a bit of Spanish and German in school, but nothing really stuck. In addition to those two, I would like to know how to speak Chinese and Hawaiian fluently, and as many others as this little fantasy would allow. Oh! American Sign Language would be high on the list as well. With my volunteer gig at a service dog training facility, there are always opportunities to help out more by signing for people at events or trainings, but I’ve never been able to help.

The next thing I would like to be able to know how to do without having to put in the effort is how to invest in the Stock Market. This has always been something I felt was so beyond me and would take too much of my mental capacity, and so have never tried to learn. I feel I don’t have the patience to learn it right, and would risk making a mistake, but if I knew how to do it correctly without ending up in catastrophic failure, it would be a lucrative endeavor. So, a Grandmaster of stocks is number four.

Finally, I would want to be a Grandmaster of medicine, including on humans and animals, and specifically in emergency situations. I knew I never wanted to be a doctor or vet because of the bodily fluids involved and the smell (no one ever talks about the smell). I couldn’t force myself to spend the time to learn how to care for someone or an animal that is critically ill or has a major injury. In my worst-case-scenario brain, I imagine what I would do if I were ever in that situation where my actions could save someone, but I didn’t know what to do to help. Thinking about that freaks me out, so if I could be a Grandmaster of emergency medicine, I think that would calm my nerves and assure me I would be able to help in a dire situation like that.

If you’re game, what’s one thing you would want to be a Grandmaster of? Tell me about it in the comments

This post was inspired by "a very Wodehouse challenge" . The other two items I created for the challenge are here:

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The Winning Color  (ASR) A defeated Queen attempts to bring a victory to her troops #2179314 by Emily

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Grandmasters Through History  (E) A brief summary of five notable chess Grandmasters #2179334 by Emily